Their last album, 2009's Hazards of Love, was a thicket of baroque stylings and involved medieval narrative but, mercifully, it seems to have got all the prog out of the Decemberists' system. Album number six reverts to rootsiness and with exquisitely simple, country-inflected melodies chiming with pastoral sentiments. It might be their most affecting yet. There's not a misstep, and a devotion to simplicity doesn't rule out touches as delicate as the little shivers of violin that punctuate opener "Don't Carry it All". If you're not moved by "January Hymn", on which Colin Meloy describes clearing snow "to green the ground below", consider your wintry heart frozen.